Have you ever looked around as you walk through a store or a mall and watched the faces of people around you? Have you ever noticed children playing on a ball team or on a playground? There are so many unhappy faces. Why? What is missing? We have so many opportunities and benefits open to us living in the United States, yet as a rule, we are unhappy. In sermons at BRINGING BACK GOD, PASTOR JOHN COLLINS MARIETTA PA and BRISTOL TN, says we have been given a blessing in this country by the freedoms which we are allowed to live by. PASTOR JOHN COLLINS says we have been given a land of milk and honey, but we have turned it into a land of greed and money! Greed and money have made us an unhappy nation. We see others who have things that we want, so we work harder to get more money to buy what we want, but at the expense of what and who-we move away from God and from our families. The further we move away from what is important in our lives toward what we think we need, the more unhappy we become. We want fancy cars, big houses, expensive clothes, we want to belong to a crowd of people like those in nightclubs and who we see on TV, we want our children to be the best in gymanstics, or dance, or sports teams like soccer, softball, lacrosse and we want them to be seen by others as the best. We try hard to make it the best that we can. But does it give us happiness? If you look at the faces of the children who sit on the bench waiting for their turn, or the child who is chewing on their nails while they wait for the scores on their dive or their floor routine, it's not happiness at all. If you look at the faces of people walking in the mall or in the store, they don't smile. They don't make eye contact with others.
God does not want us to be unhappy, according to those sermons given by PASTOR JOHN COLLINS MARIETTA PA and BRISTOL TN, God wants us to be happy. He sent His Son, Jesus, to save us from our sins. Wanting fancy cars, big houses, expensive clothes is envying what others have, it is finding pleasures for ourselves. God wants us "to speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gently, shewing all meekness unto all men. For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving diverse lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another." Titus 3: 2-3 (KJV). It because God wants us to be happy that He sent Jesus to us. "But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life." Titus 3:4-7. It isn't that He wants us to be poor: of course we need to work and have an income, interact with our friends, but He wants us to have what we need. If that means to be well off, then that is His plan for us, if not, then that's His plan too. He knows what we need before we know it, according to the Holy Bible.
He knew we needed Jesus and sent him. The Old Testament writes of laws and commandments that the tribes of Jacob, Israel, were to follow, but they couldn't. Generations went by where time after time, the tribes of Israel failed to do God's will, to follow the laws. When Jesus was sent to us, God was giving us another chance, all of us. He wants us to be happy. He wants us to come to salvation through the Cross and the sacrifice of Jesus. Today is Good Friday, which is the day that Jesus was crucified so that we could have eternal life. Not just a good life here on Earth, but eternal, forever, always. God gave us His Son so that we could live eternally, to be happy, eternally. If God wants us to be happy eternally, wouldn't he want us to be happy here too? We need to turn to God, to bring Him back into our lives: He is gone from the government, our schools, and in some places, our churches. It's time for us to bring Him back into our lives. Like PASTOR JOHN COLLINS BRISTOL TN and MARIETTA PA says, we need to bring God back one person at a time, one church at a time. Find time to bring what's missing back into your life: Faith in God.
If you want to hear more from PASTOR JOHN COLLINS, you can listen to him at www.blogtalkradio.com/pastorjohncollins. You can hear him on the radio as PASTOR JOHN COLLINS on WIGN and Top Gun radio stations, BRISTOL TN. Stop by and hear him live at BRINGING BACK GOD, 1505 Broad St. Bristol, TN, 37663.
God bless you.